Progress Report August 2011

Hi all. Here's a long overdue progress report.

 

Shadowfell:

 It looks as if the first novel in this new YA series will be called simply 'Shadowfell', and the others will have different titles followed by 'A Shadowfell book.' I've just finished a round of revisions based on the combined report from my Australian and US editors, and the manuscript has gone back to them. If they're happy with the revisions, we'll move on to copy edit stage (where the ms gets checked for errors of logic, spelling and punctuation etc.) Basically, this means the hardest work (for me, at least) is done on this book. I love it and I hope readers will too. Although Shadowfell is shorter than my adult novels I think it's a satisfying read for adults.The editors commented on what a wonderful protagonist fifteen-year-old Neryn was. And guess what? They let me keep the Scots dialect.

 

We discovered the name Shadowfell had been used recently in Dungeons and Dragons, but decided to keep it.

 

Return to Sevenwaters:

Please note, this is not necessarily the final title for this new Sevenwaters book - I just needed something to call it while I was working on it. I've written around 109,000 words out of an estimated 150,000. Because the deadlines for this book and Shadowfell 2 are very close to each other, I am going to be extremely busy until around April 2012. The trip overseas plus the need to put this project down to do the Shadowfell edits meant I fell a bit behind my schedule. I've also got some other activities coming up (see below) that will gobble up some time. So I am likely to be very slow to reply to emails and letters from readers, and not very active on the online forums. The place you're most likely to see me is on the Facebook Fan Page (link in left column.)

 

I am pleased with Return to Sevenwaters so far. Maeve is an interesting narrator. Her character has been shaped by the traumatic accident in her childhood and her resulting injury, and also by the fact that she has spent ten years living at Harrowfield as a foster daughter of Bran and Liadan before returning home at the age of 20. Young Finbar, aged 7, also has a major part to play in the story.

 

Other writing-related activities:

I am a guest at the Big Sky Readers and Writers Festival in Geraldton, Sept 9-11. Program details should be available from the Geraldton Public Library. My sessions below:

 

Friday Sept 9 (9.30-10.30): Creating Your Own Legends (for young adult writers)

 

Saturday Sept 10 (2.00-3.30) Finding Your Writers Voice (for adult writers)

 

Sunday Sept 11 : Panel discussion with Lara Morgan  'Out of this World'

 

I'm presenting a three hour writing workshop on November 19, in Rockingham, as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, for those who haven't encountered this phenomenon.) More details available later.

 

I have third 'extra' job between now and the end of the year, which I can't make public at this stage. To put it simply, my workload is ridiculous. Must learn to write faster ...